Detective in Richard Speck case dies

Jack G. Wallenda, a Chicago homicide detective on the midnight shift, took the biggest call of his career early on the morning of July 14, 1966.

Eight student nurses had been murdered in a Southeast Side town house. A seasoned street cop, Mr. Wallenda quickly set about protecting the crime scene.

From then on, he played a leading role in the case that resulted in the capture and prosecution of Richard Speck.

Mr. Wallenda, 83, died of congestive heart failure on Saturday, Nov. 21, in his home in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood, said his daughter Sharon Lopez.

"If I had my choice of all the detectives in Chicago for the Speck case, it would be Jack Wallenda," said Oak Park attorney William Martin, who as a young assistant with the Cook County state's attorney's office led the team that prosecuted Speck in a sensational 1967 trial.

"He protected the (murder) scene, which wasn't easy. He did a magnificent job of keeping it pristine for the crime lab," Martin said.

After taking part in the massive manhunt that led to Speck's arrest, Mr. Wallenda helped compile an exhaustive background on the killer, in anticipation of a possible insanity defense, Martin said.

He was also part of a small detail of detectives assigned to watch over the case's key witness, Corazon Amurao, who had hidden in the town house and survived Speck's rampage.

To ward off reporters and the curious, the detectives stayed in an apartment next to Amurao's through the end of Speck's trial.

"He became close friends and made her comfortable, which was crucial to making her the magnificent witness she was," Martin said. "She said she'd be all right as long as Jack and the other detectives were in the courtroom when she testified."

Mr. Wallenda and the other detectives assigned to Amurao diligently "sat like bumps on a log and monitored the testimony" throughout Speck's trial in Peoria, recalled Bob Wiedrich, who covered the event for the Tribune.

"There was nothing flamboyant about" the straightforward and soft-spoken Mr. Wallenda, said Rudy Nimocks, a former deputy superintendent with the Chicago police.

A Chicago native, Mr. Wallenda graduated from Lane Tech High School and served with the Army in the Philippines, said his son James. His uncle was Karl Wallenda, the famous tightrope walker who plunged to his death in Puerto Rico in 1978, his family said.

He joined the police force in the early to mid-1950s and before long was a detective, working out of Area 2 on the South Side.

"Jack was primarily steady midnight" shift, said Charles Lind, a retired police detective who worked with Mr. Wallenda. "Things would happen. You went there."

In the late 1960s, he worked briefly as an investigator with the state's attorney's office under Edward Hanrahan, then was chief investigator in the Illinois attorney general's office under William Scott.

Later, he was executive director of the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, where among his tasks was disciplining inspectors accused of taking bribes in the famed Mirage Tavern investigation.

Mr. Wallenda's wife, Stella, died in 2008.

He is also survived by sons Jack Jr. and William; daughters Sandra, Patricia Beauchamp and Donna Murphy; 12 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.